Into the Chinese mind: The Harvard Business Review with a salient human interest story about some examples of what stirs the Chinese hierarchy of needs for forward motion – the family unit and how they evaluate reputation.

However, I soon learned that hiring the best and brightest would be a lot harder than I thought. In my Silicon Valley experience, the best engineers look for audacious challenges, because the bigger the challenge, the greater their chance to prove themselves and reap the correspondingly larger rewards. Joining a startup company early is an exciting opportunity and potential path to glory for them.

In China, I have found that a different mindset dominates. When I started recruiting talent for my new company, before candidates asked about our strategy, they asked how much money we had. They wanted to know what my plans were for IPO. One candidate told me that he expected “a seven-figure package” (in US dollars). While there was some interest in our plans for China’s mobile market, their primary concerns were economic and reputational: how could I prove to them that they would become rich, and that our company would be famous? I don’t blame them for being skeptical of my tiny start-up, but I was struck by how much more risk-averse my prospects were than those engineers I’d worked with in Silicon Valley. Over the next months, I began to understand why. Read the rest of this entry »

Public Diplomacy and foreign policy mileage while leveraging an eager domestic audience: China’s increasing love for football solidifies further with China Construction Bank (founded 1954 turned commercial in 1994, listed on the HKSE since 2005) on a three-year sponsorship gig with Manchester United, the English Premier League’s most successful club. Anyone watching EPL games recently would have noted most advertising hoardings have already been dominated by Chinese companies in the past two to three years.

Manchester United has today (15 January) agreed a three-year sponsorship with one of China’s most prominent banking groups, China Construction Bank (CCB).

As part of the agreement, United’s first with a Chinese bank, CCB will hold the rights exclusively to produce the official Manchester United branded credit card in mainland China.

The CCB Manchester United Credit Card is set to be popular with the club’s fans in China, offering them a range of exciting benefits, including various club-related incentives. CCB will be marketing the card to its almost 102 million personal banking customers in mainland China. Read the rest of this entry »

Asahi Shimbum: Japanese coverage on the Southern Weekly censorship matter.

Could this really be the case of the manufactured end of media censorship as the comment below suggests?

I think the reality and culture of the Chinese press is that it has been dynamic for a while now. The southerners have been known to be more vocal and discerning of central power – time spent in Guangdong province watching the news there will yield clues for anyone interested. Today it extends further up north – any time spent on Beijing’s local television current affairs programmes will reveal a growing number of self-analytical programmes. It’s even more apparent when one factors in Greater China, with Hong Kong and perhaps contentiously Taiwan in the mix.

If interested, Chinese-language papers such as Nandu 南都 Daily (translated as Southern Metropolis Daily) for a start are useful to get a pulse of the Chinese fourth estate in action.

For Greater China (Taiwan) coverage on the issue, check out Wen Qian World Weekly’s investigative coverage on youtube here (in Mandarin only without subtitles – according to the report Southern Weekly has had a reputation of being leading and cutting edge with investigative journalism – a must watch if you can understand Mandarin:

Screen cap of the only comment left on the online page thus far, by Mark Newham. As of publishing, this article has been tweeted 71 times and shared on Facebook 53 times.

BEIJING–In an apparent attempt to quell the uproar over censorship, Chinese leader Xi Jinping expressed displeasure toward the media control division and said he would not punish journalists who disobeyed its latest order, sources said.

Xi, general secretary of the Communist Party of China, appears to have given top priority to preventing the row from expanding further and threatening his new leadership installed in November.

Arguments for free speech erupted after the reform-oriented Southern Weekly based in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, was forced to rewrite its New Year edition before it was published on Jan. 3. Read the rest of this entry »

Xinhua: Not leaving the grey areas of corruption to chance prior to the holiday periods – a top-down directive clearly stating how public funds can not be used.

First established in 1927, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection 中国共产党中央纪律检查委员会’s current Secretary is Wang Qishan – China’s current ‘troubleshooter’, one of the seven in the latest Politburo Standing Committee.

More on the Ministry of Supervision here. It may come as a surprise for those not in the know this is a ministry with a history of female leadership. More on Ma Wen here.

BEIJING, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) — The disciplinary watchdog of the Communist Party of China (CPC), as well as the government’s supervisory authority, have called for efforts to halt extravagance during the upcoming holiday season.

The use of public funds to purchase cigarettes, liquor and gifts for government officials should be strictly prohibited, according to a circular issued by the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Ministry of Supervision on Thursday.

Public spending on extravagant banquets, travel, entertainment or sporting activities will also be prohibited during the New Year holiday, as well as February’s Spring Festival, the circular said.

The socio-cultural reality of China is that each student competes against a cohort of about 10 million peers each year, at least at the gaokao level.

That also necessarily means double that number by way of vested interests of parents, but it does not stop there. Multiply that by the attention of grandparents and relatives, and it may be unlikely integrity would be the forefront of their thoughts, nor the trump card these families would hold close to their chest.

The grand narrative of integrity may be a necessary step forward but how will it be en-culturated without losing its competitive edge is another point of contention.

Loaded down with heavy stress, Chinese students compete with each other fiercely on various exams and competitions, their parents often anxious to offer help. When exams are approaching, some Chinese parents meticulously prepare balanced diets, a variety of health care products and even prescription drugs that are believed to help supplement the exam-takers’ energy and improve their memory. It seems they never think that their devotion to their children may in fact be poisonous.

Recent media reports on China’s first known case of a teenage athlete taking performance-enhancing drugs have aroused public attention over the issue of teenagers abusing drugs. According to China’s anti-doping agency, Liu Yuxiu, an athlete from a high school in Longkou, Shandong Province, tested positive on a drug test during the national track and field sports meet in August.

If you are shocked at this, thinking that doping scandals, often emerging during major international sports events, could never plague young students and see it merely as an isolated case, think again. A worrying trend here in China is that stimulant drug abuse is gradually becoming a common practice on the nation’s campuses. Not only teenage athletes, but also ordinary students, from primary school to college, are following the trend out of pressure to perform on exams and competitions. In most cases, parents are the drug providers.

China’s intention is to double GDP by 2020, and with that correspondingly double its GDP per capita. If it succeeds it is merely carrying out its promise of equitable growth – its five-year plans are clear for all who bother to read.

The level of success of course, can be measured in some way by the bridging of its digital divide. Sometimes it is hard for those well intentioned speculators who have never set foot in China to see what that means. The nature of the internet is as such that there is no way to cover it with a blanket. Streamline yes, but there is simply no way to turn off the tap.

Apart from that, the biggest population of the Western sphere is the US… China deals with a population more than four times larger. Compared to the UK, that’s even more significant. With >500m internet users at the moment, one has to bear in mind China is still, only 50% urbanised (just as one indicator), nowhere near solid state in terms of access to the democratisation potential of the internet. How does one manage 500 million self-serving narratives? When it hits 1 billion, what then? In Chinese leadership parlance, 1 billion small problems is a much bigger problem than 1 big problem.

No one has managed a situation that scale before. No one.

Extract from the Interview –Liu: I think corruption is not a problem for China alone. Once you are in the period of social transformation, it’s unavoidable you’ll have all kinds of problems. Just like Deng Xiaoping once said at the beginning of opening up of China, he said, “When we open the window we’ll let in the fresh air, it’s unavoidable that flies and mosquitoes will be in.” But the important thing is how the party face up to it and adopt measures to deal with this problem. I think the leadership is resolute and determined.

Esler: But our correspondent couldn’t even get on Facebook when he was in China. I mean, you can’t get on Twitter. It’s not quite as you present it.

China-US Focus: Can major power relations detach itself from the construct of the zero sum game? Dr. Chen Xulong, Director of the Department of International and Strategic Studies at the Beijing-based China Institute of International Studies talks about a new type of relations where a common destiny becomes the driving narrative. That said, the oft said most important bilateral ties in the world are hardly simply bilteral ties. They are hardly insular to just the themselves. With their corresponding spheres of influence and proxy actors clashing too, perhaps a much broader view is necessary.

China’s view of “a new type of relations between major powers” has drawn much attention in the world, especially from people interested in the China-US relationship. A good understanding of this concept is necessary.

China’s Exploration of the “New Type of Relations between Major Countries”Since the beginning of the 21st century, Chinese leaders have been exploring the way towards a better and more stable China-US relationship. Their exploration is based on the understanding of the importance of the bilateral relationship. The China-US relationship is a bilateral relationship of great importance, vitality and potentiality in the world, and is also highly representative of a rising power and an existing dominant power. The past history of China-US relations has showed us that China and the US both gain from peaceful coexistence, and will lose from confrontations, that the mutual interest serves as the bedrock of cooperation, and that China-US cooperation is conducive to stability in the Asia-Pacific region as well as peace and development in the world.

The Chinese leaders’ exploration is also based on the understanding of the characteristics of this age and the developing trend of the world. They have realized that peace, development and cooperation are irreversible trends of the times. With the development of multilateralization, globalization and informatization, all the countries share a more common destiny with mutual dependency and intertwined interests. Read the rest of this entry »

South China Morning Post, Hong Kong: No more red carpets as China reportedly becomes more aware of how it projects its national image to both domestic and foreign audiences. Xi Jinping kicks off his fifth-generation take on the core Chinese leadership by urging a collective dispensing of pomp and circumstance, starting at the highest level. Visual aesthetics cannot be discounted in political communication, intentional or otherwise. Of course, a subtle and negotiated consensus within the Chinese core leadership has always been priority – we’ll see if this manages to be pulled off in time and if anyone overtly steps out of line.

BEIJING (AP) — New communist leader Xi Jinping is on a mission to soften the image of Chinese officialdom, winning kudos for his breezy personal style and ordering leaders to take a knife to the pomp, formality and waste that have alienated many among the public.

With his silky baritone, glamorous wife and daughter at Harvard, Xi cuts a very different figure from the staid, hyper-private leaders of the past. Even his posture, more like that of a slouchy college professor than a stiff party cadre, has won him plaudits.

Xi took the new informality a step further at a Tuesday meeting of the 25-member Politburo, ordering that arrangements for leaders’ visits and the trappings of power be drastically pared back. Elaborate welcoming ceremonies will be eliminated, traffic disruptions avoided, and staid, often worthless reporting on the doings of the leadership dispensed with. Even red carpets are to go. Read the rest of this entry »

Navarro and Autry: ‘You just can’t stay in a deal where only one side is required to follow rules or behave in a civilized manner. It is time for Washington to take off the gloves and fight for American jobs like the 700,000 other ones Apple has left in China.’

In open support of the encirclement and containment of China, alluded when Syria, Iran, and North Korea are propped up in the conversation. This to me, interestingly suggests that the logic of domestic protectionism over global production networks is good business for a global marketplace of cyclical consumption and planned obsolescence.

Navarro and Autry in a global call to action against China: looking back when Apple was made in the US.

I’m going to take a little (very little) victory lap here. Several times in this space, I’ve suggested that Apple needs to move manufacturing back home. Each time I’ve gotten comments like “that’s not going to happen” or “they will just move to Vietnam or the next cheapest labor market.” However, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced on Thursday that he is going to manufacture a line of Macintosh computers in the U.S. Firstly, good work Tim, and thanks for finally listening to the vocal minority of us who have been complaining about this situation for years.

I still have my first Macintosh, with its anemic 128k of RAM. When that plucky little beige beastie greeted the public it was assembled at a state-of-the-art plant in Fremont, Calif. Yes, that California, the one with the high taxes, tough labor laws and the environmental crazies. To be fair, Apple moved Mac production out of the state within a couple of years and out of the country not long after. Apple production was done in various places including Cork, Ireland, before finally settling in China about a decade ago.

Now, the specifics of the Apple plan were light and the statement that the capital investment will be a mere $100 million suggests this first foray back into American manufacturing won’t be a big deal for a firm that keeps about 1,000 times that in the bank. However, that is a fine start. Frankly, re-shoring can’t happen over night, because America’s manufacturing infrastructure and workforce will need years to recover. When I interviewed executives at Foxconn City a couple years ago, they told me they didn’t think most of what they built in Shenzhen could be built in the U.S. at all. The fact is, that many segments of the electronic product assembly supply chain and production engineers experienced with the latest hardware are hard to find in the U.S. Read the rest of this entry »

Nobel laureate Michael Spence on a crucial point of China’s development – and how long after Deng Xiaoping’s and Lee Kuan Yew’s friendship that helped sparked the opening of China, Singapore’s lesson of one-party rule remains poignant.

As a one-party system with a somewhat similar ethnic complexion it continues to maintain popular legitimacy despite a high media literacy rate by design. Despite recent challenges, it still largely calls the shots on policy while transitioning to first world status with a knowledge economy that shifted from too, manufacturing.

Like Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in their first few decades of modern growth, China has been ruled by a single party. Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP) remains dominant, though that appears to be changing. The others evolved into multi-party democracies during the middle-income transition. China, too, has now reached this critical last leg of the long march to advanced-country status in terms of economic structure and income levels.

That said, it is most probable it is a case study of the many others they would consult in taking care to cross the river in highly turbulent times. Singapore is not definitive, but a series of stones the Chinese will feel around for before updating or reconfiguring their own socialist system to fit those needs.

From financial crises to violent revolution, what reason would China have to look that way for inspiration? Only for lessons on how not to do it I believe.

China has 1.3 billion mouths to feed. Singapore has 5.3 million. The official reported population density of about 7,257sq km from Singstats in 2011 this official stat does not consider the fact that Singapore has zoned out a 40% nature green sponge if you will, for water catchment, so true habitable space = 60% of 715sqkm).

Both cannot afford to make mistakes in their use of large scale systems.

That is where the lesson will be drawn. How it seldom makes mistakes, and when it does – it knows how to handle it in both foreign while giving domestic and alternative press some leeway for discourse.

NEW YORK – China is at a crucial point today, as it was in 1978, when the market reforms launched by Deng Xiaoping opened its economy to the world – and as it was again in the early 1990’s, when Deng’s famous “southern tour” reaffirmed the country’s development path.

Throughout this time, examples and lessons from other countries have been important. Deng was reportedly substantially influenced by an early visit to Singapore, where accelerated growth and prosperity had come decades earlier. Understanding other developing countries’ successes and shortcomings has been – and remains – an important part of China’s approach to formulating its growth strategy.

Like Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in their first few decades of modern growth, China has been ruled by a single party. Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP) remains dominant, though that appears to be changing. The others evolved into multi-party democracies during the middle-income transition. China, too, has now reached this critical last leg of the long march to advanced-country status in terms of economic structure and income levels. Read the rest of this entry »